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Just as some brokers say that speculators can't play the stock market because it's really "a market of stocks," so Congress is not really a legislative body -- it's a body of individual legislators, each with his own pet causes or projects.

Legislation often has to wait until a sufficient number of causes and projects are assembled into one bill, which becomes a freight train, an omnibus or -- appropriate for this season -- a Christmas tree with many ornaments. For many lawmakers of both parties, the urgent desire to deal with the fiscal cliff is not as important as putting a personal ornament on the bill that does the job.

Until a few years ago, it was possible to assemble coalitions of special pleaders by tacking "earmarks" onto appropriations bills designating a new park or a new highway interchange as an important national priority. Earmark abuse, however, became so rampant that even the members of Congress were appalled. They shut down a process that they had turned into bribery by another name.

The unintended legislative consequence was to make it much harder to make little deals, and without little deals it became much harder to make the grand bargains so beloved by statesmen and political-science professors.

Congress is now a cacophony. Committee chairmen can't lead because nobody will follow; Bigfoot lobbyists cancel other out. Every cause has become the "third rail of American politics," not just Social Security.

End of the World

As Washington ambles toward the fiscal cliff, it's instructive to examine the apocalyptic advertisements in National Journal, Politico, The Hill, Roll Call, and other publications written about or for the government.

"Washington, don't raise the eligibility age for Medicare. Seniors deserve guaranteed health coverage, not higher costs," says AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. In another ad, it says, "Washington, keep your word. Leave Social Security out of a last-minute budget deal."

"Our position is clear: Do No Harm to Housing," says the National Association of Realtors.

"Dedicated and hardworking civil servants simply can't afford another round of cuts to their pay or benefits. It's time for others to contribute," say a couple of dozen federal and postal workers' unions.

"If Congress doesn't act before the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, family-owned businesses will be hit with a crippling estate-tax burden," says a coalition of more than four dozen organizations of family-owned businesses.

End of the Government

None of these issues are as important as the U.S. government's long trek to insolvency, but they are more immediate to the people who depend on the free flow of government money. To be sure, there are a few associations that advertise their devotion to a compromise that employs both tax increases and spending cuts, but specificity eludes them.

Said the Business Roundtable last week: "We pledge our active support for a compromise that includes comprehensive and meaningful tax and entitlement reforms that result in market-credible spending reductions and revenue growth. The deal should be a balanced solution to the fiscal cliff and long-term deficit and debt issues. To address these challenges with the scale of response required, no options should be precluded from a potential solution."

At best, this is followership, not leadership. But it's the closest thing we have to statesmanship in Washington.

Because lobbyists and legislators have become so Balkanized, all of the interest groups and interested members of Congress have been excluded from the negotiating table. Nobody counts except one Democrat, President Barack Obama, and one Republican, Speaker John Boehner. Meetings with more voices would just make more noise, mostly static.

This is an imperfect solution. While Obama and Boehner circle each other like wrestlers, neither one can be sure that the rest of Washington will follow where they lead -- if they lead anywhere. Their strongest supporters are most adamantly against making concessions, so their best friends could become their worst enemies five seconds after the details of a deal are announced.

The situation is unfortunately reminiscent of the Roman Republic's division of consular power between its two most popular politicians, a system that collapsed in a series of civil wars.

The all-but-inevitable equivalent this year in our republic is an accidental tumble off the fiscal cliff. Just as the Troubled Asset Relief Program could not make it through Congress on the first try in 2008, so will it prove surprisingly hard for the lame-duck Congress to enact even a sensible law to avert the automatic tax increases and spending cuts.

And, as memories of the TARP should instruct us, sensible laws are in short supply during major crises.

Crisis Without End

Gambling on politics is always foolish, but we can play with pennies in our imagination, rather than the billions and trillions that are really at stake. Here's our bet:

Obama and Boehner miss the legislative sweet spot (if there is one), and their compromise (if there is one) proves too specific, or too vague, or both, for their allies to accept. The 113th Congress convenes on Jan. 3 with other things to argue about, such as an attempt by Senate Democrats to rewrite the rules so as to choke off many filibusters more easily.

After a few weeks of the world's not coming to an end, the least-bad option is proved to be the one that all sides feared most, with its tax increases and spending cuts.

Even if our bet loses, even if there is a Grand Bargain worthy of the capital letters, the fiscal crisis won't end. Every year brings more retiring baby boomers and higher health-care costs. The government will go on writing checks and shirking its real duties.